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" The idea isn’t to prepare to shoot it out with the government, the army and marines, all the various federal, state and local police forces, but rather, to make certain decision-makers in Washington realize they are not dealing with an entirely dependent populace, incapable of effective resistance to tyrannical designs — either now or decades down the road. Such thinking may not be hip amongst NPR listeners or readers of The New York Times, but was central to the thought of America’s Founders. And is well understood by wise patriots today.

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting deer or keeping a pistol in your nightstand. It is not about protecting oneself against common criminals,” retired Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) says. “It is about preventing tyranny. The Founders knew that unarmed citizens would never be able to overthrow a tyrannical government as they did. They envisioned government as a servant, not a master, of the American people. The muskets they used against the British Army were the assault rifles of the time.”

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I wonder if you know what "reason" means. According to you, someone is biased if you question events that have no evidence save the texts that they were written on. On that basis we should be all in on the existence of Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox. Or are we 'biased" if we don't. And tell me the difference between belief in that bit of mythology and belief in a God who sacrificed himself to himself to save mankind from himself? Nothwithstanding the redundancy, how you biased becaused you don't believe this? It would be "reasonab le" not to.

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"In recent years Great Britain's chief export to the U.S. has been a payload of books by atheist authors such as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and literary critic Christopher Hitchens. They contend that faith is irrational in the face of modern science. Other prominent British atheists seem to be having second thoughts. Is there some revival sweeping England? No; they are examining the rationality of Christianity, the very beliefs Dawkins and others are so profitably engaging, but are coming to opposite conclusions.

Well-known scholar Antony Flew was the first, saying he had to go "where the evidence [led]." Evolutionary theory, he concluded, has no reasonable explanation for the origin of life. When I met with Flew in Oxford, he told me that while he had not come to believe in the biblical God, he had concluded that atheism is not logically sustainable."

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"More recently, A. N. Wilson, once thought to be the next C. S. Lewis who then renounced his faith and spent years mocking Christianity, returned to faith. The reason, he said in an interview with New Statesman, was that atheists "are missing out on some very basic experiences of life." Listening to Bach and reading the works of religious authors, he realized that their worldview or "perception of life was deeper, wiser, and more rounded than my own."

He noticed that the people who insist we are "simply anthropoid apes" cannot account for things as basic as language, love, and music. That, along with the "even stronger argument" of how the "Christian faith transforms individual lives," convinced Wilson that "the religion of the incarnation … is simply true."

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Here is a question for you for which I don't have an answer. I am rather surprised you haven't caught me and my model on it, so now I put it to you.

I have argued that progress, at least in the material world but also in science, requires that we break down activities, specialize them, and then figure out by what rules they coordinate. If we are trying to understand natural phenomena, we break it down to its constituent parts and try to understand how nature coordinates them; or if we specialize an activity in order to do it better or more efficiently, we need to work out the rules ourselves.

Markets, including for ideas, are supposed to be self-coordinating and that in fact is their beauty. As a libertarian you prefer markets to artificial rules.

Markets have the additional beauty that they ration scarce resources.

A large number of the rules we have are designed to coordinate specialization. One hunts and another gathers so they need rules to share the product, which will vary in supply from one day to another. When James Watt had his brilliant idea to separate the heating and cooling chambers of his steam engine, he still needed another ten years to figure out how to coordinate the two chambers before he had a practical engine.

So when do you need rules and when not, and how do you decide?

I think where it gets hairy is when you introduce the concept of "fairness" as the left is rightly wont to do, and much of the right punts to God and markets. But what is fair, when does one intervene in markets, who decides, and by what mechanism? How can you do it with minimum loss of the automatic coordinating and rationing attributes of markets?

Please note that I raise the question not from a practical perspective, for which we all have or pretend to have answers based on our personal ideologies, but from a purely theoretical perspective wherein I am trying to understand by what mechanism, that is HOW one bridges allocative efficiency with fairness and still maximize both, "fairly" :).

The way I've always tried to deal with fairness, at least with respect to material goods, is by trying to create the conditions for making more of them, by trying to figure out how to increase the supply so that everyone gets his or her share. That is, I have essentially punted on resolving the issue of fairness, including in allocation, or of rationing, by insisting on letting markets do their job, including particularly, like you, with better educated participants wherein religions carry a large part of that burden for lack of a better provider.

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I would start with democracy since that is a basis for which we have organized our society.. When we want to criticize each other we inevitably descend into name-calling, and the most satisfying name-calling is to accuse our opponent of being like a dictator. Comparing an adversary with Hitler and Stalin are usually very popular. These comparisons are meaningless but they satisfy our urge to pin the label "undemocratic" on our antagonist.

I am reminded that in the current gun control debate how many times people who believe in tighter gun control are being compared to dictators. If i suggest that gun owners be held more accountable for their guns it will automatically engender an accusation of being undemocratic.

So given the value we all place on democracy, it seems that "fairness" as a concept should be geared to the many rather than the few. That is why so many Americans could get on board with tax breaks for the 98% while the top 2% should pay a bit more. Now the other side of the argument will try to postulate that taxing the top 2% a bit more is actually not only bad for the top 2% but bad for the rest of us since they are the ones who create wealth.

This is where Zach's education schtick comes in. If you don't have sufficient knowledge you might be convinced of something that just does not meet any objective test. So knowledge is key. But then we have knowledgeable people who have differing opinions. One might even say differing values. And that is where we get stuck.

You mentioned earlier that the private markets would straighten out the auto industry without any interference from the government. i don't disagree, but you have to ask yourself at what human cost? If it costs the livelihood of one million workers, isn't that cost too high in order to keep the markets pure? But perhaps the cost is less. Perhaps the cost is that one million people will have to lower their standard of living. Now we are talking about a more nuanced argument. Since we all overspent as a nation, should we be all be experiencing a lowered standard of material wealth to compensate for the overspending?

It is very easy to say that the government should just spend less. But what if that means you will have to pay an additional $5,000 if you have to be hospitalized? How many of us will jump on that? I will bet that the most died-in-the-wool conservative is not going to like getting an additional $5,000 bill when he/she comes back from the hospital.

So it always ends up that fairness for me may be different than fairness for you. If I never get hospitalized i may not care that you ended up paying an additional $15,000 because you had to go three times. But you may have a different view. You may be OK with me getting $500 less a month in Social Security payments because you have a great investment portfolio and you don't need the additional $500. The SS cut may seem fairer to you.

That, is only worth discussing if you value fairness at all. There will be some that will just say, "tough toenails." Life is unfair. Deal with it. Remember, the country doesn't guarantee equality of outcomes. just equality of opportunities which is true enough, but when you're the target of the imbalance, then somehow the concept of fairness will raise its head regardless of what your personal philosophy is.

I'm afraid religion doesn't give us much guidance in this area. The Constitution, although somewhat vague, is a better arbiter. But then it is up to us mere mortals to sort it all out. God is not helpful in this life. We are on our own, and we need to find common ground and work together as much as possible because we are all in the same boat. Pretending otherwise is just not productive.

I don't think I answered your question, but I wanted to say that the greatest good should go to the greatest number....

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"Remember, the country doesn't guarantee equality of outcomes. just equality of opportunities which is true enough, but when you're the target of the imbalance, then somehow the concept of fairness will raise its head regardless of what your personal philosophy is."

Peter,

This country doesn't guarantee equality of opportunity. It's like most corporate job bidding systems. They will post a job that many people feel that they are "qualified" for. However, most won't even get a hearing and even those that get intervewed may be participating in a "kangaroo court". The hiring manager may have had somebody in mind but need to go through the corporations "hiring process" and "dot the i's and cross the t's".

But it gets worse. There's a job opening for an entry level person. A candidate from the outside has a much worse chance of getting the job than someone's whose father, mother, uncle is a long term workker at the company.

This weekend Sixty Minutes intervewed Justice Sonia Sotomayor , the first Laitina Supreme Court Justice. She recounted how , as the number 3 graduate at her Bronx High School, she had received a conditional acceptance to Princeton. She remembered the school nurse questioned why she had gotten the acceptance when the number 1 and number 2 had not. Since she is hearing the University of Texas case on Affirmative Action, she declined to say anything on the subject other than that it means different things to different people.

Because of mechanisms like I described above, programs like Affirmative Action are absolutely necessary. Without them the idea that Equality of Opportunity would be just that - an idea.

As to notions of fariness about taxation, economist have a construct called marginal utility. They subjectively assess that value of the next dollar received or more importantly the next dollar spent. Generally the lower the amount of money you have, the greater the utility of the next dollar. And the more money you have , the less the utility of the next dollar. This construct defeats the fiction of the "fairness" of a flat tax. The conversative or even libertarian argument for tax fairness is that if everone paid the same rate, then that would be fair.

However, someone paying 10% of their taxable income of $25,000 is subjectively paying a much higherv alue than someone paying 10% on 250,000.

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OK Greg, good points. i probably should of said, "purportedly" equality of opportunity since we so frequently fall short of our ideals. The most obvious was the "all men are created equal" phrase in the Declaration contrasting with the reality of tolerating slavery for so long. But in my defense, Xavier was posing a philosophical not a practical question.

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No one doubts that slavery existed to long under the Constitution, but it was the Constitution that made it possible to abolish it.

That was 150 years ago. You need to move on, Peter, and maybe change parties if you are all that concerned since the Democrat party was the biggest "slavery and discrimination" political party in its form after the Civil War and even up to the 1960s ever to exist in the modern world, with the exception of the Nazi party, and the Red parties in Russia and China.

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Peter and KeithThe Constitution was ratified and adopted in 1776.The Emancipation Proclamation was less than 90 years later (1863), followed shortly by the 13th Amendment (1865).Less than ninety years.Now compare that to slavery before the Constitution, where as far back as I can find, slavery existed in the year 8,000 BC.

When people came here to settle, they came with a mindset rooted in the traditions of their homeland and for many slavery was common.To me, a country that could convince a majority of it's citizens that a custom it came here with should be outlawed because it's wrong, and do so with a Constitutional Amendment in less than ninety years deserves praise, not "it took too long".

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Xavier said"... and much of the right punt to God and markets."An unfair statement since you understand that a large portion of the right are Christians, and what they feel to be true, is not punting, it's belief.The rest, like me, believe that a market free to fend for it self is the fairest form of competition.Winners win and losers lose on the market when individuals choose (be they Christian or not), independently and collectively, who wins and who loses.Not when a government dictates the products we choose from.

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Powell described what he called a “dark vein of intolerance in some parts” of the Republican party. “They still sort of look down on minorities,” he said. Referring, without naming them, to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, Powell said: “when I see a former governor say that the president is ‘shucking and jiving,’” as Palin did last year, “that’s a racial era slave term. And when I see another former governor [Sununu], after the president’s first [2012 presidential] debate and he didn’t do well, say he was ‘lazy‘ … he didn’t say he was slow, he was tired, he didn’t do well, he said he was ‘lazy.’” Now that may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-American, the second word is ‘shiftless’ and then there’s a third word that goes with it.”

Powell added the “birther” movement to his list of examples of intolerance, and asked, “why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?”

The former secretary of state under President George W. Bush added that the GOP needs to address issues like healthcare, and economic opportunity for those who are lower income, adding that “the party has gathered unto itself the reputation that it’s the party of the rich.”

Powell said the the party is in trouble “if it’s just going to represent the far right wing.”

For all those critiques, he remains a Republican, albeit a moderate one, and that “until I voted for Mr. Obama twice, I had voted for seven straight Republican presidents.”

Some of you were hoping that this would kind of slip under the radar. But it didn't (darn). This morning Joe Scarborough , the former Republican congressman and arch conservative on the MSNBC show "Morning Joe" largely agreed with Powell's assessment. Scarborough worried that if this lurch to the right continued it would result in another presidential electoral catastrophe in 2016 which might leave Republicans unable to compete at the Presidential level. Pundit Steve Radner opined that political parties "usually self correct before they self destruct". But Radner failed to see any signs that the kind of correction process that turned the liberal Democratic party of Modale and Dukakis to one that could win 1992 was underway.

American's are observing a radicalized element of the Republican party who not only seem intolerant of minorites but unable to accept even common sense measures designed to curb gun violence. Most NRA members favor background checks and limits on the number of bullets in a clip. Yet the NRA hierchy is fighting even these measures. Kooks like James Yeager, CEO of an outfit called "Tactical Response" which trains people in the use of weapons and tactical skills, vowed "to start killing people" if President Obama continued to pursue gun control. The state of Tennessee immediately revoked his carry permit. If guys like this keep dominating the scene in the Republican Party, the race for President in 2016 will be decided in the Democratic Primary.

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Colin Powell knew of Richard Armitage's leak within days, but chose not to report it to the President and sat idly by during the investigation, trial, and conviction (that included a prison sentence) of Scooter Libby. Unconscionable and unexplainable in the context of his supposed loyalty to Bush and to the American people. Now he relies his cadre of mostly leftist protectors now to try and weasel his way out of the accountability of it all...My wish is that he will join the Democrat Party and then try to distinguish himself from the left and change the Democrats back to what they have traditionally been.

Powell has shown he has no place in the GOP any longer with the race baiting and the misinterpretation of what goes on at the voting booth, where recent immigrants feel more comfortable with their big government leftist statist roots than with the U.S. Constitution and individual liberty and Federalism.

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No XavierNo he doesn't, but he yaps with long boring post that impress no body but himself.He buys into everything he sees on TV, the media is his God. He belittles and berates the opinions he disagrees with AND the person espousing that opinion.You've dealt with him longer than me, he turns my stomach.What's your tonic?

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Powell should look in the mirror and ask himself how he could let an innocent man sit in prison for the crime committed by his own aid, known by Powell. Powell was well aware that Scooter Libby did not disclose the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, but he was willing to sit back and say nothing as Libby was convicted of that crime and sent to prison.

Now that the facts are our on that scandal, it is Amazing that Powell believes he still has the moral high ground to judge the GOP for being "intolerant." Powell is now moving left quickly. He is unwelcome among conservatives who cannot abide injustice of the highest magnitude as to let an innocent wallow in a prison cell for one of his friend's crimes.

His race-baiting comments are also unwelcome. America is well past the skin color game, but apparently Powell didn't get the memo. We have a black President, the Republicans sent the first black senator to that chamber in decades this past November...we have a conservative SCOTUS justice, and many more examples of minorities in public office. Powell's own rise to powerful position under a Republican administration runs counter to his own new thesis of widesrpead racial discrimination. He is living in the past. He should exit the stage gracefully as it is clear he has no new and productive ideas to offer America.

Powell and the leftists need to stop the focus on skin color and begin to discuss the ideas that will move our county forward. Start with individual liberty, freedom, economic emancipation from a crushing tax and regulatory structure.

These concepts are skin-color neutral. Every individual in America will benefit if we get back on a fiscally responsible track where we aren't borrowing $.50 of every $1 and spending 25% of GDP on government programs, including unsustainable entitlements that we can't pay for.

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Your grasp of the truth or reality leaves something to be disired. First of all even though Libby was convicted he didn't do a day in prison. Second, he wasn't convicted of leaking Plames identity but lying about his knowledge of her role at the CIA.

"Libby was accused of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned about Valerie Plame's identity and whom he told. Plame is the CIA employee whose husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, was sent to Niger by the agency to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium"

Jurors generally felt bad about the conviction believing that Karl Rove or even Dick Cheney were more culpable.

Lastly, Richard Armitage admitted that he might have been Robert Novaks source of the Plame leak. He didn't lie. Libby was told at least 9 times about Plame's role yet either forgot ,denied being told, or stated that he was told by the late Tim Russert. That's why he was convicted.

And since it is clear that Powell had nothing to do with the Plame leak, what he told a distraught employee has nothing to do with his observation of what the Repblican Party has become. The kind of radicalism that Powell is refering to showed its ugly head during the 2008 campaign and has proceeded unabated through today,

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This is a Republican speaking about HIS party. I've pointed these items out before but you dismiss them as mere partisan bickering. While you sit idly by as Keith, et al partake in the same sort of tactics, there are are Republicans willing to go on the record and call "a spade a spade". You can make this out to be whatever you want to. But what it is, is a problem. Some Conservatives have a problem with intolerance whether it is gender, racial , ethnic, or sexual preference. Currently these Conservatives control the Republican Party.

Even you appear to be unwilling or unable to accept homosexuality, resorting to clumsy rationalizations of conservative intolerance of it. Your model tries to explain societal change. But you appear to say that the rules that underpin societies are uniquely cultural and religious. A closer examination though reveals that the rules are part evolutionary, part cultural, part philosophical , and part scientific, Just this weekend an evolutionary biologist, turned Philosopher, Massimo Pigliucci stated that religion was a poor way to promulgate morals. He favored a combination of Philosophy and Science.

You seem to not have factored in that an increasingly educated and technological world will find it difficult to accept rules from a source demonstrably steeped in mythology. That conservatives routinely traffick in such mythology not only from a religious perspective but to justify the various forms of intolerance highlighted by myself and by General Powell should alert you that something is missing in your model. Societal change may not rest in a bunch of inviolate rules but in any culture's growing acceptance of new reaities facing it. It is and was the cultures that were unable to do this that perished.

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Conservatives don't have a problem with what people do privately in their own bedroom, or in public as long as it is not sexually overt. Where are your examples of intolerance on this level? Can you give us examples?

We are also not against societal change as long as it does not trample the rights of individual Americans as those rights are set forth in our Constitution.

Radical egalitarianism runs counter to the principles our nation was founded upon. Radical egalitarianism, historically, has led to despotic tyranny. Radical egalitarianism has overseen nearly 100M human murders in just the past century. Radical egalitarianism has impoverished tens of millions of people while the government leaders live in relative largesse. Radical egalitarianism is the enemy of the individual and will kill him, imprison him, degrade him at every opportunity. Radical egalitarianism is "the end justifies the means," at whatever dubious cost that may entail.

America needs to re-awaken to the Constitutional principles that made it great in the first place. Individual freedom to enter contracts freely without government intervention, the ability of workers to find jobs based on those unfettered contracts, and the ability of individuals to depend on the concepts set forth in the Constitution without an ursurping federal government changing the rules at whim, undermining the people's confidence in their system of government.

Obama, with 50.3% of the popular vote, is just a man at the head of one of the three branches of our government. He is not a King. He must follow the law of the land, which is the Constitution. He knows he doesn't have power to amend the law to "fundamentally transform" the country, so he will try to do it by un-constitutional executive fiat. This is the "societal change" that you want...but it ain't gonna happen with such a flimsy constituency in support of it. We have the law on our side, and we won't allow change that is counter to American freedom, liberty and the rule of law.

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GregI'm not sure about Keith, but I have no desire to re-read Colin Powell's version of truth.Here's a better idea, how about you re-reference those specific issues for us?Ad hominem and strawmen tactics aside, you can post your first question or comment to me, I'll be civil.Why do I get the feeling you won't?

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I'll let Keith speak for me on this one, with one exception for which I again demand an apology. You addressed this post to me and said "Even you appear to be unwilling or unable to accept homosexuality, resorting to clumsy rationalizations of conservative intolerance of it." Give me proof or an apology. There comes a time when wild irresponsible accusations like this one become totally intolerable, so put up or shutup.

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A few pages back you tried to justify biblical sanctions against homosexuality as a health issue. When I pointed out that it was probably "paternal certainty" , patriarchy, and defense of Judaism against Caanite fertility rites which keyed the various sexual rules found in the Jewish Bible, you finally got the picture (or maybe you didn't). You play the victim too much. And I wouldn't let Keith push the send button for one of my emails let alone "speak for me". Just take a look at his "studied" portrayal of the Valerie Plame leak as he tries to kill the messenger in this case Colin Powell.

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Cowards all of you who just go around making gratuitous accusations against people that don't agree with you, and I am including Colin Powell in that characterization for his silence while others were being hurt. I don't give a hoot about an opportunist like Plame and particularly her husband, who, together with Collin Powell and his army factotum, had no qualms about destroying or allowing others to destroy people's lives. Of course people like you revel and relish the spectacle since the victims are other people who don't agree with you. To the lions anybody who disagrees with you or you don't like. Way to go Greg. You should be proud of yourself for the new morality you are promoting.

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Yeah. Cowardly Joe Wilson who was sent to Africa to confirm that uranium was being shipped out of Niger to Iraq. When he found no such thing and said so, he was targeted by the Bush administration. He didn't agree that an Iraqi nuclear program was underway because he had no evidence that the source material was being shipped there. Shame on him for saying so. Shame on Colin Powell for calling the Republican Party out on its intolerance. Not that he saying anything that minorities didn't already know. Or maybe 95% of African Americans, 75% of Latinos , 70% of Asians all got it wrong.

And kudos to Consevatives who remain firmly in their bubble. It's funny how they are fond of quoting the constitution but when phrases like "Full Faith and Credit" show up , they conveniently forget them. How about a return to those constitutional principals.

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GregYour use of the term "full faith and credit" is bordering on embarrassment.Article IV section IFull faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public Acts, Records and Judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

What are you reading into this, I'm not seeing it.It does say "And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the Manner in which..."

Congress, not a President nor his wants and desires.No fiats, no proclamations, that's what kings do, and I think we all understand the Constitution was not a "how to" book for tyranny.

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Zach and Greg, Tom Terrific did it again and I feel your pain. This time, it wasn't so humiliating but Texans did too little too late. It is really hard to fight the lightning fast offense Brady does. The Ravens have figured out how to neutralize Brady in the past so I may only have one week to bask in their glory. It was a much better game this time.

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I'm really not a Houston fan. We got our comeuppance a couple of weeks ago. Now owner Jerry is running aroung hiring and firing folks. He's brought in Monty Kiffin, the King of the 4-3 defense. Notwithstanding that our personnel our oriented to the 3-4, Owner Jerry thinks that this is the right move. Sportcasters around here say Owner Jerry's actions are weirdly reminiscent of Al Davis in his declining years. Cowboy fans could look back on the "Glory Years" when we were 8-8.

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where you took issue with my statement that on matters of fairness "much of the right punt to God and markets." When condensing such complex issues as of fairness it is necessary to resort to broad characterizations that are seldom adequate. What's important is the overall point and drift and I think you got it. There are two very distinct points that I'd like to make here, one to do with how one creates the maximum amount of wealth for all, and the very different one of what one does when markets are imperfect.

With respect to the first, in the strictly material dimension I myself favor markets by a long shot. I think they are the most effective and efficient mode of organization and if allowed to function freely, even when they are flawed, they will result in the greatest material wealth for all. I always like to simplify by saying that that is the only way everyone will get a refrigerator and the rich, no matter how rich they are will likely only have at most two. Wealth is just a claim to power and if the the rich have shown they can use it well by producing more so be it.

In saying this, yes, I realize that I am saying that a rising tide lifts all boats or referring to trickle down, and so be it. The only alternative is government organization and rationing.

As to flawed markets and God, I think the healthcare market provides the perfect example. In a seminal paper in 1963, Nobel Prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow drew attention to the gross information asymmetry between doctors and their patients which provides the intellectual underpinning for government intervention in healthcare. The upshot is that ACA provides for a number of panels that will now make one-size-fits-all decisions from Washington.

To take Obama's repeatedly used example between 2008 and 2010 of excessive removals of tonsils, Washington may now decide whether such procedures are necessary and allowed. That decision used to be between you and your doctor, and if the procedure was more delicate you might have included your spiritual advisor. Today everyone asks whether it is covered. So who do you prefer to trust for your very own very particular case and needs, your doctor, who granted knows more and may be conning you, or a bureaucrat in Washington?

This is where markets and God or a similar source of morality kick in. Frankly I prefer to trust my doctor if I know him to be a God fearing man, or my God fearing general practitioner knows that the specialist that will operate on me is trustworthy. It all boils down to trust, does one trust a far away bureaucrat one doesn't know or a doctor with whom you can have a closer relationship? I'll leave it at that and watch Greg get all excited. And I'll grant that that relationship of trust has now been broken for many reasons, and that for additional reasons financial institutions are entirely different.

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XavierMy reply is short.You are a wise man.I'll just say that the markets, with all their short comings, are head and shoulders above anything the government devises.To say more would only be redundant.

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So healthcare was accelerating at warp speed because markets were working. For whom? Ideally markets balance supply with demand. They do that with price. But for markets to operate properly, the players must act RATIONALLY. I recently purchased a hybrid (cue tree hugger music) car because I was fascinated with the technology and wanted to save money. I have a rather long commute so it made sense that I should drive something other than the 6,000 Lbs. behemoth that I had driven for 9 years at great expense.

I could have purchased just about any car and beaten the mileage I was getting. But could I beat the effciency of the non-hybrid counterpart with the hybrid. That's a tougher question. I figured there was about 10 mpg difference between the hypbrid average mpg and its non-hybrid counterpart. Over 5 years at the mileage I drive I could pay the price difference between the two. Now that's rational bordering on obsessive treatment of a purchase decision.

How many people go through that decision process when they make purchase decisions? What about assymetrical information flows where the seller know more than the buyer.or vice versa. There are a myriad of things that can go wrong with markets that can disadvantage participants to their detriment. We just went through a financial disaster where asymetric information flows played a huge part in convincing people to buy houses that they could not afford.

But at least in most cases the market participants at least try to act rationally even if they don't have the information to make a rational decision. With healthcare the decision making process is by definition not rational. In that scenario , what makes you think that buyers of healthcare will make rational calls. "I just had a stroke and my doctor has given me the choice of anticoagulants" "Should I use TPC or the generic coagulant which is nearly has good at a tenth of the cost" . "My doctor (who unbeknownst to be gets a big kickback from the TPC folks) recommends TPC because it is genetically engineered agent that works better"

That's just a tiny microcosm of the problem. What about the poor slob who doesn't have insurance. If he is seriously injured, he gets "stabilized" and sent to a county hospital where other poor slobs that don't have insurance go. The market says for that guy 'you don't have insurance so you are lucky you lived through the accident and you will be lucky to get out of here alive"

But it gets worse. I actually saw this on 60 minutes. A guy who had boozed it up all of his life was in the hospital suffering from various organ failures. He was not long for this world. Yet when asked if he wanted a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order, he said no. He went through another two weeks of hyper-expensive intensive care treatment before dying. So where's the rationality in that?

People are simply not rational about their health. They eat the wrong things, don't exercise , and apparently don't get flu shots. I don't know how many people I have talked to who have gotten the flu because they didn't bother getting vaccinated. Most people can't think rationally when it comes to living or choosing to die. You may have some sort of trusted physician type but most people don't. Thinking that markets alone would result in the optimal healthcare solution was bankrupting the country at the same time treating a significant portion of the population as second class citizens. Did I mention that Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed on to Obamacare?

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Peter: "So given the value we all place on democracy, it seems that 'fairness' as a concept should be geared to the many rather than the few."

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Behold, the Tyranny of the Majority.

Tocqueville:

"A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them."http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/1_ch15.htm

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So what is your answer to democracy? Tyranny? Democracy may be imperfect, but paraphrasing Winston Churchill, it sure beats everything else. I'll take Churchill over the aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville any day.

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No Peter - I'm pointing out that democracy can become tyranny when we use our collective power against a minority.

"There were all of three thousand in the procession - the most of them drawn from the slums of Boston; and as they went by the Parson turned to me and said: 'They call me a brainless Tory; but tell me, my young friend, which is better - to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?'" Mather Byles, Sr.

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PeterStop worrying so much about our democracy, and notice our true form of government is being usurped.We are a republic, and the Constitution is the law that we all live by.Focus on, and understand that, support it, and you will not have to worry about tyranny so much.

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Xavier, the article was a good critique of some of the absurd things bureaucrats can do but he left one important detail out.

Where was the discussion about the personal responsibility for the people who insist on building homes in very high risk areas? Like on or near beaches, on river banks, etc. The absurdity starts from the moment the zoning people allow building in the first place, no doubt in the past when people didn't worry about the consequences of building in flood zones.

Making fun of bureaucracy is loads of fun. i can match funny/horror stories with anybody. What gets lost in these stories is the personal decision making of people who want to be two feet from the water and then wonder why nature will act up from time to time.

There was a time when we allowed people to build flimsy structures in earthquake prone zones. Is it really a shock that we finally figured out that building codes should be a little different in an earthquake zone? So if your antique home collapses after a 5.0 earthquake, maybe it might be a good idea to upgrade your new home if you want to continue living there.

So yes, Xavier, government regs can be a pain or even contradictory, sometimes even ridiculous. But how about human behavior? Does Kimball assume any responsibility for choosing to live in a flood zone? When does personal responsibility come in? I live one block from the ocean, but we very carefully picked a property that was sufficiently high that even in the worse hurricane, the water will never reach our house. We spent a lot of time figuring this out. I wonder what went into Mr. Kimball's decision to buy his house where he did. He doesn't bother telling us, so I have to assume he just liked the view and little else..

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I wish we could all be perfect, individuals and bureaucrats, but we aren't so it is all about balancing. Many smaller errors by individuals or very few large ones by governments? Go back to my post to Zach in the previous page where you yourself said we can't be perfect. In that post my concluding phrase to him was to agree that education is all, and, yes, most absolutely personal responsibility. But how much education when buying a house, how much should someone know in preparation for a decision made only two or three times during a lifetime, and can we all act as wisely as you did?

I've actually struggled with this dilemma in real life when training former Soviet professionals to become real estate appraisers, and establishing licensing or accreditation systems for those professionals free of corruption. In the end it all came down to a balance between an expert appraiser and a new homebuyer who can only be expected to know so much. Like it or not trust enters the equation and thus ethics or morality.

One of my problems with the mortgage crisis in this country was that too many retail brokers and financial advisors were acting in a higly unethical manner, again at the level of the ultimate client. Are we to have government judge and license millions of professionals in all disciplines including that they act ethically (see also my post at the bottom of the prior page regarding trusting doctors)? And how do we enforce that so many remain ethical when we already have a shortage of police to control more obvious breakdowns?

It ain't easy and that is why I have asked time and again the even more basic question of who is reponsible for turning us into moral and ethical people that are responsible for themselves and their own actions, specially with the breakdown of the family and the distancing of people from religion, which was better than nothing even with all of its flaws. Up to now nobody has been able to provide a satisfactory answer. Greg speaks of harm/benefit calculators and Zach of empathy genes and lots of education, but to his credit at least Zach is not ready to let go of religion even though he isn't a believer.

These are all questions that need answering when addressing the basic premise of this blog or forum. It is nice to go on and on about such questions when thinking about them in terms of just one small dimension of life, but when you have to consider the immense complexity of our society and the near endless number of decisions we all have to make, the whole issue and questions take on an entirely different meaning.

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PeterThe link was not an episode of "When Government Goes Wild", it was a true account of how non-private the government sees private property when the opportunity arrises.Personal responsibility and where the home was built are a part of zoning laws. If the permit was issued and the house built, how can you justify a response by you, or the government that it was an irresponsible place to build it.And God forbid a puddle remains on the property, now your rights to re-build are also dictated by the EPA due to that "body of water".